Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Reading Life: How Can I Give Away
These Books?

In a true effort
to cut down on my huge collection of books, I lurk warily before the
bookshelves in the hall. I guess this one can go. And this. And perhaps all the
paperbacks that belonged to my mother. Or not all. Some. A few. Maybe. Because when
I riffle the pages, I find her penciled notes in many of the margins and it
would be like giving away a part of her. Despite the yellowed paper. And the
pinched print. (How did it become so small?)

A peculiar,
miscellaneous assortment of fiction and non-fiction stands on parade dress
before me, from Stephen King to Malcolm Gladwell. Could never give away King’s The Green Mile. I’ve read it perhaps six
times, annotated it, underlined, highlighted, all to study how King pulls
readers in. How the whole plot of the book, everything, is revealed in the
first few pages. As readers, we just didn’t know it yet. Genius.

The test is
whether I could get the book now from the libe, even download from the libe to
my eReader, or borrow it from a friend. Weed, weed, weed on down the line.

And yet. I could
never give away these Nevil Shutes. Or Jessamyn Wests. Or Rumer Goddens. And
here’s that lovely, remarkable My Family
and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell,
brought to life so lovingly on PBS some years ago. I waltz it to the tipsy pile
on the nightstand for re-reading.

And what about My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert
Sharenow (is that a great surname or what?). Like the work of Christopher Paul
Curtis, Pam Munoz Ryan, Bette Bao, and many other writers, this book layers
fiction upon fact, upon history. One courageous, real-life six-year-old named
Ruby Bridges is embedded in a plot that movingly introduces the twists and
terrors of the Civil Rights era to young readers who weren’t alive, and whose
parents weren’t alive, when she walked with four tall federal marshals into a
school in New Orleans under court-ordered desegregation. How she didn’t eat her
sandwiches for lunch for a month because a horrid protester, one of many lining
the sidewalk to the school, hissed that she was going to poison Ruby’s food.
The naiveté of the young narrator. The slow build-up of understanding. Nope.
Can’t give that one away. But this book can move to the lending library in the
living room for my critique groups, grands, and others.

I work on,
walking my fingers over spines, remembering the feel of the pages, the
inability to stop reading deep in the night due to cliff-hangar chapter endings
. . . Uh-oh. Here’s Oldest Living
Confederate Widow tells All by Allan Gurganus. I know before I open it that
I’ll see the note I wrote myself after finishing its 900+ pages: “I will keep
this book forever.”

That’s it for
today. Bibliophilism wins over weeding. One and a half boxes for the Friends of
the Library do count. But the BFFs stay put.